Sony Xperia L1 Review; One of the Best Budget Phones to Buy

6 min

2017 has turned out to be a year of a comeback in the Pakistani handset industry. After Nokia and Motorola, Sony is back in the game and has recently introduced seven Xperia smartphones in the country.

Earlier this year, Sony wowed us all by unveiling Xperia XZ Premium, world’s first smartphone with 4K HDR display. The company is admittedly chasing the 200$-$400 market segment in the Pakistani handset industry and to compete with the highly competitive entry-level market; Sony has introduced Xperia L1 which can be thought of as a successor to the Xperia E family.

Sony for many years has induced brand loyalty among many Pakistanis but is the Xperia L1 worth spending money on, let’s find out:

Design

It is a fact known all around the tech industry that you can distinguish the Sony Xperia smartphone by just looking at the design as the company has its unique take on the looks of its handsets that differentiate them from other smartphone brands.

Xperia L1 has a sturdy design featuring a matte plastic panel on the back. It is 151mm tall and 8.7mm thick with some beautiful curves that make it easier to hold the device in one hand.

The smartphone fits perfectly in the hand where the matte plastic ensures a tight grip, saving us from the horror of accidentally dropping our device. Xperia L1 has a 5.5 inches display with is neither too big to cause nuisance nor too small to skip watching movies on the mobile phone.

There is no home button on the smartphone adding to the beauty of the device. The smartphone’s power button and volume rocker are placed at the usual place, the right side of the device.

At the top, we can find a 3.5mm headphone jack which quite frankly is a relief as we still have a long way to go to accept wireless headphones.

One of the best things about this device is that it supports USB-C port which is quite a huge deal for an entry-level device.

The smartphone has a 16GB of internal storage which you can always expand to your liking by inserting a MicroSD card.

Display

When it comes to screen technology, there is no one better than Sony which gave us 4K display in a smartphone this year while most of the brands are stuck on 2K screen resolution.

So far, we are impressed with the display of Xperia L1 as well which features a 720p screen resolution which is impressive considering the device’s price tag. However, keeping in mind that the chinese competitors are providing 1080p displays in their budget phones, Sony should up their game.

The colors on the screen are bright, clear and sharp as none of the movies that we’ve seen on the device showed any sign of pixelation. The viewing angles are excellent, and yes it is worth watching a movie or your favorite TV show on the smartphone.

The touch on the smartphone is quite smooth, and you can swipe right from the main display to bring up Google Now.

Speed and Performance

Only an idiot would expect a budget device to run on steroids and the same can be said about the Xperia L1. We used this device rigorously for one week, and it is clear that it can carry out all the basic functions seamlessly.

The smartphone comes with a MediaTek MT6737T processor and a modest 2GB RAM that enabled a smooth experience while we made some calls, used social media to post funny cat videos and opened some heavy duty sites in the browser.

While conducting our tests, the device would sometimes lag after working continuously, but then its overall performance was splendid. The device comes with an Android Nougat out of the box.

On Geekbench 4, Xperia L1 scored 675 in single core category which is ahead of Nokia 5 and 1888 in multi-core category.

Xperia L1 scored 38617 on Antutu Benchmark tool which is not bad when we look at the budget category of the smartphone.

Battery Life

Looking at the specs sheet of Xperia L1, we were a little skeptical about the device’s battery life knowing that it packs a 2620 mAh battery, but we were wrong to worry as the smartphone exceeded our hopes.

During our battery test, it took us three movies of 2 hours each, some heavy gaming, continuous use of Utorrent, and some serious browsing on the internet to completely drain the battery from 100% to zero, which is quite extraordinary.

One of the reasons for the phone’s long-lasting battery is its 720p display that doesn’t drain out the battery, unlike the upgraded 1080p.

Xperia L1 also has a STAMINA and Ultra STAMINA mode to help us further prolong the battery life of the device by disabling some functions of the smartphone.

You can either activate these modes manually whenever you want otherwise the STAMINA mode will kick in when the device is left with 15% of battery. Among the device’s many features, battery life was the one that impressed us a lot.

Camera

Sony is one of the major players in the smartphone camera market mainly because it supplies many manufacturers with sensors

The company has done a very good job with Xperia L1 as for a budget device, the smartphone’s camera is really good for a budget device. The phone features a 13MP f/2.2 primary camera on the back which captured the real depth and natural colors in the photos.

The indoor shots seem amazing especially if you’re a foodie who loves to take pictures of your food to share it on the social media. Sometimes we experienced some noise while taking a picture in low light but that is completely expected considering the budget category and the price tag. However, the pictures came out a bit darker to our taste.

You can swipe from left to right to switch between photos, videos and manual mode using only just hand leaving the other hand free for any other task. The Manual Mode offers more control to the user over white balance, exposure value, shutter speed, and focus.

While using the standard mode, the camera can see whether you’re taking a picture of a document or food and can adjust the mode; something you can see at the bottom left corner of the camera screen.

When tested in low light conditions, the smartphone showed better performance than many of the devices present in this price range.

The device also has a 5MP front-facing camera that captures some amazing selfies. Again you can adjust the white balance and EV in the manual mode or enable HDR. The front camera also has a feature called soft skin effect for taking perfect pictures.

Check out the following pictures to see the Xperia L1’s camera in action:

Other Features

One of the cool features of this device is that you can add another user for the smartphone or use it as a Guest. You can easily switch between more than one persona and can share your phone with someone else or separate your work and personal life.

Xperia L1 also features a smart cleaner that is enabled by default and can optimize storage and memory to provide better performance.

Another fantastic feature called Smart Backlight Control can detect whether you are holding your Xperia device in your hand, keeping the screen alive when you’re looking at a photo without touching the smartphone.

Sony also offers an Android application called Xperia Lounge that provides exclusive entertainment content to the users.